Donald Simanek's physics documents and links.
Physics Documents
The Museum of Unworkable Devices.
Perpetual motion machines treated as puzzles and paradoxes for analysis.
- Directly downwind faster than the wind, DDWFTTW..
Can an unpowered vehicle move directly downwind faster than the wind?
- A Brief Course in Classical Mechanics.
- Physics problems to challenge
insight. Elementary physics puzzles and paradoxes.
Challenging physics problems.
More problems and puzzles. Some of these are classics.
- Instructive physics lessons.
Pendulums.
The horse and cart problem.
- Physics lecture demonstrations, a select list.
Physics Toys, Tricks and Teasers.
- Newton's Cradle, colliding
balls, exectuive pacifier, Newton's balls.
- Glossary of physics terms,
emphasizing words often misunderstood and misused.
Let's Clean Up our Physics Language.
- The Illustrated Dictionary of
Physics. What those strange words seem to mean.
The Dangers of Analogies.
Textbook analogies are usually wrong, incomplete, or misleading.
- Didaktikogenic Misconceptions in Physics.
Misconceptions that result from instruction.
Secrets your physics textbook didn't reveal.
Things you've always wondered about.
A descriptive explanation of ocean tides. and the forces that drive them.
- Tidal Misconceptions, exposing textbook errors in treating tidal forces and their effects.
Centrifugal force and tides.
Textbook misconceptions about centrifugal force.
- Teaching scenarios:
electrostatics,
lenses,
images.
- Physics utility programs in BASIC.
Solve common elementary problems quickly.
- Thin lens ray tracing program.
A thin lens simulation which may be used as an instructional tool or
for self-study.
- Angels on a Pin, by Alexander Callandra.
A classic story illustrating different approaches to a physics problem.
- Scientific Urban Legends
and lies textbooks tell.
- History of Science Quiz. Textbook historical
sidebars often don't tell the whole story.
- Math Mayhem. Mathematical humor and
diversions.
- The Scientific Method.
What is science? What is Pseudoscience?
by Donald Simanek.
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Laboratory: Reports, Error Analysis
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Physics Links
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Astronomy links.
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